Kansas.”

“Put your hand on your horse’s neck,” she commanded, leaning forward and setting the example.

The boy did as she told him, but drew his hand back suddenly.

“Gosh!” he exclaimed. “Don’t their hair get hot in this sun!”

“Well, I’m just as hot as that all over,” she replied emphatically, “and I want to go to a country where a body can get under a tree once in a while. I can’t go in till five o’clock, and I forgot my jug, and I’m so thirsty I feel as if I’d crack like this ground,” she said, pointing to the earth between them.

“Jimminy! I’ll ride back and fetch you a drink,” he said, poking his heels into his pony’s ribs so suddenly that the little beast kicked spitefully.

The girl called after him to “never mind,” but he was off on his errand. It was a good mile to her home, but the boy knew what it meant to forget the water-jug on a day like this.

When he returned half an hour later the sunshine had changed character and there was a peculiar dimming of its brilliancy.

“Is it going to rain?” the girl asked as she lowered the jug to her knee. She wiped her lips on the skirt of the faded sunbonnet she wore and looked up again.

“Rain!” Luther Hansen swept the horizon with the air of one who knew the signs, backing his horse about to see on all sides as he did so.

“Th’ don’t seem t’ be any clouds,” he said in surprise. “Ain’t it queer! Looks’s if it might be some kind of eclipse,” he said. “Do you remember—no, of course you don’t—but, th’ was an eclipse of th’ sun—total, I believe they called it—when I was only about seven year old. All th’ chickens went to roost, it got so dark, an’ when th’ cover come off they crowed’s if ’twas mornin’. We had a blue hen an’ she crowed too. Pap killed ’er. He said it was bad luck t’ have a hen crowin’ about th’ place.”

“You all don’t believe in luck, do you?” the child asked.

“I don’t, but pap does,” the boy answered apologetically. “I cried about th’ blue hen; she was just like a dog; she’d let you ketch ’er, an’ she’d sing, ‘co-ook, co-ook, co-ook,’ to ’erself, right in your arms, an’ wasn’t afraid. She wouldn’t never set though. I guess that’s why pap was so ready with his axe.”

Happening to look up again, the girl gave an exclamation of surprise. “Is it snow?” she asked.

“No!”

They sat with their faces turned skyward, studying the upper air intently. The sun was completely obscured now and the rapidly moving mass, not unlike snow indeed, was being driven straight toward the north. Whatever it was, it was driving fiercely ahead, as if impelled by a strong wind, though there was not a breath of air stirring below. Soon small objects began to detach themselves from the mass, so that the eye could distinguish separate particles, which looked not unlike scraps of silver driven with terrific force from the tail end of some gigantic machine. One of these scraps struck the girl on the cheek and she put her hand up quickly to feel the spot. While examining the place she received a similar blow on the forehead and another on the back of her hand. Drawing her bonnet down tight over her face for protection, she shaded her eyes and again looked up. The whole moving cloud had lowered to a distinguishable distance.

“Why, they’re all grasshoppers!” she exclaimed; and indeed so true was the observation and so rapidly were the grasshoppers settling that the boy and girl were obliged to turn their backs and shield their faces from the storm.

The cattle also, annoyed by the myriads of insects settling upon them, began to move about restlessly and presently to mill slowly around, threshing with their heads from side to side while they whipped their flanks with their tails.

“I didn’t know they came like this!” the girl said, as Luther’s pony sidled over toward her.

“What’d you say?” the boy demanded, leaning forward to catch her reply.

“I said I didn’t know they came like this,” the girl shouted, raising her voice to make herself heard above the rasping noise of many wings. “Father read out of the Prairie Farmer last week that they was hatching out in the south.”

The two drifted apart and circled about the herd again. The cattle were growing more restless and began to move determinedly away from the oncoming swarm. To keep them in the centre of the section, and away from the cornfields, the girl whipped her horse into a gallop.

Without paying the slightest attention to either her voice or her whip, half blinded in fact by the cutting wings of the grasshoppers, the irritated cattle began to move faster and, before either boy or girl knew what was happening, were in full trot toward the north. Seeing that the matter was becoming serious, Luther lent all the aid of which he was capable and circled about the herd, shouting with all his strength, but the cattle, contending against countless numbers of smaller things and unable to look steadily in any direction because of the little wings which cut like the blades of many saws, stumbled blindly against his horse if he got in their way, and, shifting around him, went on.

The girl was beside herself with trouble and anxiety. Lashing her horse one minute, and the nearest cow the next, she raged up and down in front of the herd, bending all her energies toward deflecting her charges from their course, but the struggle was useless.

Seeing that they could do nothing, Luther caught her horse by the bit as she passed him and shouted explanations in her ear.

“Let ’em go, Lizzie! You can’t stop ’em! I’ll have t’ come with you! We’ll just follow ’em up!”

“But they’re going to get into that field right off if we don’t get them turned!” the girl cried in distress, pulling down her long scoop-like bonnet and holding it together to keep the grasshoppers out of her face while they talked.

The cattle now broke into a run. There was nothing to do but follow, as Luther had advised. But the exasperated beasts were not looking for fodder and paid no attention to the corn. They were not out on a picnicking expedition; they were escaping from this tormenting swarm of insects which settled on itching back and horns and tail, settled anywhere that a sufficiently broad surface presented itself. Having started to run, they ran on and on and on. The boy and girl followed, their horses stumbling blindly over the ridges between which the corn was growing. The grayish brown sod, through which the matted white roots of the grass showed plainly, lay in fine lines down the long field, their irregular edges causing horses and cattle to go down on their knees frequently as they ran. But though the cattle sometimes fell, they were as quickly up and pushed blindly ahead, neither knowing nor caring where they were going, their only instinct being to get away.

Not a breath of air was in motion except such as was stirred by the wings of the grasshoppers or was blown from the hot nostrils of the harassed cattle. They passed through the cornfield, over a stubblefield beyond, through a slough, another stubblefield, and on to the open prairie of another section of “Railroad land.” The boy and girl made no further attempt to guide them. A cow, with the tickling feet of half a dozen of these devils of torment on the end of a bare, wet nose, was in no state of mind to be argued with, and the tossing horns, threshing about to free the head from the pests, were to be taken into sober account. All they could do was to let the maddened beasts take their own course.

For an hour, helpless to prevent the stampede, desiring nothing